


fearful lest we wish too soon

by kinnoth



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-03
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinnoth/pseuds/kinnoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark wants him out here, because it's always Mark who goes places and who wants Eduardo with him, and it's Eduardo who follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fearful lest we wish too soon

**fearful lest we wish too soon**

Mark wants him out here, because it's always Mark who goes places and who wants Eduardo with him, and it's Eduardo who follows. He's kidding himself when he thinks, spuriously, that he wouldn't have come if he'd known how it was going to be. Mark is Mark, as he'll always be, and he's so mired in numbers and sequences his fingers on the keyboard don't even stutter at the break in the perpetual party around him. And Eduardo is Eduardo: careful about other people and and kinder than he ought to be, only ever himself when he forgets who he is.

Sean Parker speaks, and Eduardo forgets himself in ways he thought he'd overcome.

Mark only looks up once Sean's tripped up into him, dodged tables and empty take-out boxes and yards and yards of power cables that divide the floor like an electric grid. Eduardo bears down close behind, silence growing in his wake, as everyone turns to see.

"Mark," Sean gasps, and shoves himself behind him. Some defense; Mark's five-nine, one-forty, barely aware. But this is only Eduardo, and Mark may as well be the Swiss Alps. Sean's safe -- he grins, crookedly, like a kid touching base where the big bad bully can't touch him -- and he knows it.

Eduardo doesn't get many chances to storm dramatically out of things like this: he's the one who does the talking down, consequences in one hand and almighty sense of responsibility in the other. "Hey, Wardo," he hears -- Dustin -- and then a scrambling sound as wires and plugs are disconnected, but he crashes past the interns and the painfully underaged groupies, beelines for the bedrooms.

"Wardo." He turns for this, Mark's voice, sees him with one hand poised still above the keyboard, the other pulling his headphones away from one ear, an expression on his face like he can't quite make out what's happened yet, but he's already decided to be irritated by it. Sean stands behind him, hands on his shoulders, mouth curved wicked like a scimitar when he winks at Eduardo and leans down to play the kingmaker, dripping whatever brand of poison he's employing tonight into Mark's ear.

Eduardo doesn't wait to see Mark respond. "Fuck the both of you," he says, and pushes out into the corridor, slams the door so hard he's almost sure he's cracked the frame. It can come out of the deposit.

Inside his room is cool and quiet and dark. It smells of Mark, because this isn't really his room: Mark's never been shy about the fact he's disinclined towards sharing, but he does seem to like Eduardo around as an accessory. Eduardo wonders how his life turned out to be like this, or if he started out by being so marginalized and has just never cared. He can't blame Mark for that; that's unfair: Mark has never extracted anything from him that Eduardo wasn't willing to carve from his flesh. Not time, not money, not leftover fries from the dining hall, quiet sympathies in the dark.

By himself now -- adjusting to the dim, gas-yellow shadow of streetlight through the tightly screwed blinds -- he feels the anger ebb out of him, or maybe he flows back into himself. He tries to hold onto it, but it's like grasping at the purpose in a dream upon waking: it had given him direction once, a certainty of action, but now it's just ridiculous. He feels ridiculous.

He should have left by the front door, Eduardo thinks. At least then he could have come back later, passed the piles of drugged girls in the hall. Crept back into his room. Crawled into bed, maybe next to Mark. They might have talked then.

As it is, this was a dumb idea, barricading himself in a room like this. He's got nowhere to go now, nothing to do but wait for someone to come, pick him out of purgatory.

The door opens at last, not slowly, not hesitatingly, so he knows it's Mark, because nobody goes through life like they have a right to everything quite like Mark. Like they have a right to Eduardo.

He brings with him the stink of stale pizza and weed, though Eduardo knows he only ever partakes in the former. Mark's body is a temple, so far as badly-fed, over-boozed, under-washed body-temples go. It's not a temple Eduardo's welcome at, but he's fine with that.

"You don't like Sean," Mark tells him like it's the most obvious thing in the world he's just found out about.

Eduardo laughs, voiceless, and drops his weight onto the bed, his head into his hands, his voice out of the back of his throat. There's a lot of dropping that goes on, when Mark's involved. Eduardo's learnt that. "No, really?"

Mark scuffs fully into the room, turns to shoo away a gaggle of over-curious groupies, and then shuts the door behind him. Eduardo's supposed to be grateful for that. It'll give him some plausible deniability, at least, that when he leaves their house, and their company, and Mark's life, that he did it on his own terms. He's not. He doesn't want to leave anything, and he knows what's coming, but fuck like he's apologizing for it. He'd meant what he said, when he'd said it, and that's going to have to be good enough for both of them.

Apropos of nothing, Mark asks, "So things going with Christy then, still shit?"

"Yes," Eduardo answers instinctively, then, "No. Wait. What does that have to do with anything?"

Mark leans against the door, and it clicks neatly under his weight. It doesn't shut out the sound, the music and drinking and interminable coding that haloes around him. "You're overstressed," he informs him. "You've always been high-strung, but that was uncharacteristic."

Eduardo says nothing, just keeps on breathing, waiting. His senses grow fuzzy in the silence, in the dark, counting each heartbeat like it'll make a difference. Seconds pass, or maybe minutes.

"Do you want me to tell you to go?" Mark finally asks in the same uninquisitive monotone he always uses. Eduardo knows well enough why he doesn't expect anything different, but it still stings a bit that it isn't.

"Is that what you think?" He's got no room for certitudes here, now. It's been three months since he last saw Mark, waved at him through his dorm room window as he went off to seek his fortune on the golden coast. Three months is a long time in business, longer on the internet. Apparently those are the levels on which they operate. He's got no idea what three months do to friendship.

"I think you want me to tell Sean to go," Mark replies. He's fidgeting, tapping his blunt little nails against the door like he's talking to someone on the other side in Morse code. His eyes are level though, colorlessly dark in the dim light, though Eduardo knows them to be blue.

Eduardo laughs again, less air this time, nearly a sigh. He says, "But you like Sean." He doesn't know if Mark can identify accusation in his voice when he hears it, though there isn't any here, not intentionally anyway.

So he must be imagining the defensiveness when Mark replies, "Of course. He's been here, doing the things you were supposed to be doing, getting us contacts, making us money. He's--"

"I’ve been doing that." It's a newly old argument between them, this. It makes him tired to repeat it, rather than angry. His voice breaks anyway. "Listen, if there's been some sort of problem with my performance at this company, I'm not sorry about what I’ve been doing; I’ve been working just as hard as any of you, just as hard of fucking _Sean_ , and if you can't see that--"

Mark interrupts, "Jesus, you know, and you say I’m absolute crap at contextualization; here, let me say it again. _He's been here_."

He's moved from the door, somehow without Eduardo noticing it. They're knee to knee now, and Eduardo is unused to having to look up to make eye contact with him.

He swallows when he says, "I'm here now."

Mark shrugs. "You are. So why are we having this discussion?"

This is absurd. Eduardo giggles, high and incredulous. "I don't know." His fingers itch with the need to touch something, so he rubs his palms over his eyelids, scrubs them back into his hairline before joining them in the back of his head in a position of surrender, execution. He says into the air, "What was the question?"

Hands pushed deep in his pockets, Mark blinks owlishly at his upturned face. "Do you know what you want?"

He's always telling Mark he needs to put more specific inflection into his sentences if he wants to be understood. This is one of those sentences, and Eduardo waits for clarification because this could go one of two ways. Knowing. Wanting. They're two very different confessions to make.

Of course, Mark doesn't oblige.

Obfuscation, then. Bullshit. He's an econ major: arts and fucking sciences. This is what he _does_. He curls back into himself and doesn’t quite look up when he answers, "I think you know what I want."

Mark tilts his head like he'll be able to read just what Eduardo means if he can just get him into the right focus. Then he declares, impassive as water, "Is that all?" and he's on his knees.

Eduardo's brain offlines for about three seconds, which is about three seconds too many, as far as Mark is concerned. Mark's separated his knees and shuffled between them in two, has started work on his trousers by three.

"You could have just said," he tells Eduardo conversationally. He's not an inch and a half away from giving surprise head to his best friend and it's perverse how little of a shit Mark manages to summon about it; he sounds no more invested than if he'd been asked to voice an opinion on sliced bread. Eduardo regains himself then and yanks at his head, so hard Mark's neck snaps back and he tips heavily back on his heels. By the time he recovers, Eduardo's crabwalked nearly halfway across the bed.

"Dude, what the fuck are you doing?!" He's not going to keep his voice down, _fuck_ the groupies eavesdropping on the other side of the door, this is _not_ about their delicate sensibilities any more. Mark's still kneeling, rubbing his scalp where Eduardo pulled too hard. His eyes have a wet glimmer about them.

"I just figured," Mark says flatly, but then he's on his feet, moving towards the wall. "It's nothing, a mistake, a miscommunication. I get a lot of those, yeah," Mark tells him, and his back's to the door, his fingers scratching for the knob; he's facing Eduardo but he isn't meeting his eyes. He says, "Don't worry about it." He's pulling the door open and being quick about it, but Eduardo knows that glimmer and he knows Mark and he knows shame isn't something Mark's so slow to hide.

"Wait," and Mark complies, for barely half a second, but that's all Eduardo needs to clamber across the room and force the door shut before he can get away. He's standing over Mark now, crowding into him so close he can feel Mark's unnatural stillness as he hides his eyes stonily away from Eduardo's face. His shoulders are disastrously high. They're both waiting for Eduardo to speak, but Eduardo doesn't know where to start.

"That's not--" he tries. Mark doesn't wince so much as physically flinch back when Eduardo tries, carefully, to make him meet his gaze. "This isn't."

"What?" Mark sounds impenetrable, impatient, like Eduardo's trying to tell him something he's already made up his mind on.

"I didn't mean for you to take it like that," Eduardo settles on. Mark laughs, an unhappy noise punctuated by the choked sounds of his breathing. "I mean I didn't know that's what you meant."

"You didn't know I’d take it like that," Mark mimics. He tries to turn away again, one hand shoved against Eduardo's chest as if he's going to push him away. "What do you know? This isn't your _thing_. You don't know jack shit."

"Hey." Eduardo leans into the door, elbow braced at Mark's ear, his other hand crumpled at Mark's shoulder, pressing him back. In this pose, they're breathing in each other's air, like sharing secrets. Mark struggles meaninglessly until Eduardo lets go of his collar, so he does, but Mark doesn't pull away. Eduardo says, "That's not fair. You didn't have to do that. It's not like I would have left or anyth--"

"Shut up. Just shut up. You don't know shit!"

Eduardo puts his hand on Mark's jaw then, and to break away from it, Mark turns and then their eyes are locked. Eduardo expects fear, some sort of anger, embarrassment. He's not prepared to find hurt.

Suddenly, it's like he can't breathe. This is too unthinkable, too perfect. It won't last; these things never can and he's had enough of all their perishable moments gone sour by waiting. "You couldn't think," he says airlessly. Wets his dry lips, tries again, hastily. "You didn't think I was rejecting you, did you? Mark, I wouldn't--"

Mark's eyes have taken on an accusatory shine. "Wouldn't what?"

Eduardo swallows down the glib and predatory thing that rises, trying to steal his words from him and make them something smart and _easy_. Mark deserves better than easy. They _both_ deserve better than easy. So his voice is raw like too-clean skin when he asks, "Do you know how long it's been since I've known I wanted you?" Mark somehow manages to blink aggressively. "It's been--" Eduardo drops his head so that he can press his forehead against Mark's, whose head goes back and whose eyes slide shut but then snap open again, watching. "I didn't know what you wanted, so I never asked."

"So you don't think I'm--" Mark starts.

"All I've ever wanted to do--" Eduardo begins.

"--oh, okay--" Mark concedes.

"--was to do this properly," Eduardo finishes. Mark's mouth is open and surprised, but very soft. "Is that all right?"

Mark is one breath, shuddering and incredulous, a momentary flutter against him. "Yeah," he says. " _Yeah_ , that's great, fantastic. Hey, listen, can you come down here for a sec?" Mark's hoodie is two sizes too big, so the hands he reaches to touch Eduardo's neck, Eduardo's hair, are half-covered soft by old cotton. That shouldn't play as much of a role as it does in how turned on Eduardo is by all this, because this kiss already has Mark all over it, methodical and examining and weirdly fastidious.

Eduardo can still feel, rather than see, Mark's eyes studying his face, categorizing, ever vigilant, so when they break apart, he lets his eyes slip open, just enough to catch his gaze, says, "Close your eyes, all right? Stop thinking."

"Okay," Mark agrees, and Eduardo doesn't even care if he doesn't mean it. Later, he might; but for now, nothing can possibly hurt at all.

**Author's Note:**

> reading facebook slash
> 
> i love how sean parker's name is always proceeded by or interrupted with the word 'fucking'. mind you, he's all faustian and shite in the movie, living out past glories and whatnot through mark zuckerberg, but i fully respect and appreciate his contributions to the internets and i refuse to demonise him on any level, including personally.
> 
> unless he gets in the way of my otp. i'll fuckin *hand* eduardo the shank if he gets in the way of my otp.


End file.
